President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama interact with Hilton banquet server Kitty Casey during the National Prayer Breakfast at the Washington Hilton in Washington, D.C., Feb. 5, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

European Christian crusaders killed in the name of religion. They desecrated Africa. They ransacked communities, exploited natural resources, and stole national treasures of African nations and shipped them back to Europe to build their continent. They killed anything and everything that stood on their way to their looting. In Wilbur smith’s book, Men of Men, we saw the brutality and single-mindedness of the British when it came to the exploitation of Zimbabwe immediately Cecil Rhodes came to town. They dethroned kings and exiled them, they sacked villages, raped communities, and laid waste towns. They took over their diamond caves and mines, they killed and maimed in the name of stones, and their avariciousness led them to break the bonds of friendship and kill even their own friends who challenged them to the moral values they thought they knew them for. They killed the young and they killed the old alike. Their viciousness was immeasurable. Their barbarism unquantifiable. They were, simply put, terrorists.

These happened in the colonial days era. But it is still happening by proxy in contemporary Africa through fifth columnists who will rather enrich their own selves than have their own country develop. We see this in Congo DR and other West African countries rich in natural resources that the European tech companies depend on for raw materials to build their wares.

Anyways, this is a topic for another day. If Africa should open its arms to vicious Europe to continue to exploit Africa and steal the wealth of its posterity from her, that is Africa’s problem. And we will tackle this issue objectively in our subsequent essay.

ISIS

ISIS is a terror organization peopled mostly by Muslims of Middle East origin and to a lesser number, their western recruits who they brainwash and indoctrinate to follow the ways of evil. Everybody knows that. ISIS is mostly a Middle East problem because they have already declared their territorial ambitions and their goal of forming an Islamic caliphate carved out of nations in the Middle East. Everybody knows that also.

Now to a significant degree, ISIS has become America’s problem too, because, first, like al-Qaeda, they have the capacity to export terror to the United States, despite President Obama’s preliminary assessment of their resources and capacity to do so when he erroneously equated them to a JV team. Secondly, by killing Americans, ISIS challenged America to action. And ISIS is getting a reaction from the United States of America. Is the reaction proportional? That is up for a debate. Will ISIS be defeated and decimated as Barack promised, without a defined strategy? That is up for debate too. What is not up for debate though is the imprudence of the 14th paragraph of President Obama’s remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. on February 5, 2015 wherein he drew a parallel between the contemporary terrorism ISIS is waging on humanity to the terrorism waged by European Christian crusaders in the past.

It is not as if the point made by the president in the 14th paragraph and on the entire body of his remarks about Christians and Muslims using their religion in similar manner as basis to oppress and terrorize others in the past are not true. They hold true for the past. They also hold true for the present. However, the analogy with what ISIS is currently doing is not pertinent or well informed and should not have been made. It came at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and most unfortunately, from the wrong voice.

As the Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States of America, President Obama should be the chief nightmare of ISIS. In words and in deeds. ISIS ought to agonize anytime they hear O-B-A-M-A, because Obama should symbolize America’s firepower hammering away at ISIS and giving them no breathing space to perpetuate evil. But when the person that ought to be your chief aggressor start drawing moral equivalence between what took place in the past and what you are doing currently, probably to give his audience an academic context of WHY you are doing what you are doing, the dangers with that kind of intellectual exercise is that it can get mistaken for sympathy and serve as a morale booster, even though the president didn’t intend any of those.

ISIS is evil on its own. Argue what you will, they are all Muslims. Just like the terrorists that carried out 9/11 were all Muslims. Let’s face it, Muslims has been responsible for most of the terrorist activities mankind has experienced in modern times. If Muslim leaders can put equal effort to quell extremism among their own the same way liberals want to be politically correct in not labelling ISIS Muslim terrorists, we will have a world with less terror.

President Obama, just like every other human can misspeak and sometimes let slip some lines that are not thoroughly thought through. From his ISIS-JV team analogy to his ISIS-European Christian crusaders comparison, it is obvious that one of the smartest man to have occupied the Oval Office has problem with drawing equivalences. However, Obama’s remarks is not the reason why ISIS and Boko Haram are perpetuating evil of unprecedented magnitude. Organized religion is the ace that have turned to a menace.